Orientation

According to the radio, the humidity today is something like 95%. Oof. It was a hot humid night, too; I did not sleep well. But I'm up now!

This is my first day of orientation! There are events from 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening, and then a social dinner thing that goes 'till 7. And *then* I have to get a five minute presentation together for Wednesday. It'll be a long day, but I do believe it'll be a good one.

I was having trouble deciding between a nice t-shirt and a button-down. I'm going with the t-shirt and I'll see how other folks look. I'm still a little unsure about how I want to present myself in general over here.

Ok, off we go!

Presentation Tomorrow

I've made it to the phase of iterating through my presentation multiple times and adjusting my speaking notes to fit my five minute block for tomorrow.

I'm going to talk about my research on Pike Creek in Kenosha as a lens to understand how cities, often seen as a sort of bastion of order amidst the chaos of the natural world, are in fact subject to greater and more frequent change than the natural environment is. It's a lot to squeeze into five minutes! I have seven slides, but they're mostly just images that I hope will provide a visual reinforcement to the broad picture I'm painting with my speech.

This is a "microteaching" presentation for incoming TAs. It's going to be recorded, and then collaboratively critiqued by a small group. Should be interesting!

(So many thanks to my advisor and other professors at Parkside for whom I had to give presentations. I'd never given presentations before going back to school. Even at work. The ones I did at Parkside were *such* good experience for me. I was terrified four years ago. Now I'm actually excited about getting up and talking about things I know something about.)